Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday July 26, 2010 @10:13AM
from the oil-already-seeped-into-brain dept.

rollcall writes "The Livingston, Louisiana public school district is considering introducing intelligent design into its science curriculum. During the board's meeting Thursday, several board members expressed an interest in the teaching of creationism. 'Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed "critical thinking and creationism" in science classes. Board Member David Tate quickly responded: "We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can't we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?" Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, "I agree...you don't have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom."'"

What you fail to see and what evolutionists seem to want to ignore is that science actually proves creationism.

Actually, it does not. Indeed, science actually "proves" very little. It certainly should not pretend to answer questions that are of a clearly spiritual nature, like "Who made the heavens and the earth?", at least until we come up with a means for detecting/measuring the things that would be required in such a "proof". On the other hand, science is pretty damned handy for explaining things like, "How did the earth come to be the way it is?"

That said, much of what science does show me leads me to believe that there is indeed intelligence in much of the "design" of our universe. The difference is that I am not so arrogant to suggest that science comes anywhere close to "proving" my pet belief system.

If God does exist, and he created the universe, science would be the method us humans use to test, document, and explain the universe.

It's akward because when [Abrahamic Holy Book] was written, science as we know it didn't exist and the writers attributed everything to God.Things go from "akward" to "my head hurts" when fundies insist that [Abrahamic Holy Book] is perfect and cannot be wrong.

Hence the ongoing troubles with Bible Literalists sitting on schoolboards and pushing Creationism.

As an atheist who attended a religiously affiliated school that taught creationism K-12 and on weekends I have a much better solution.

Mandate teaching those little bastards every religious idea they will probably come across and give Christianity no preferential or differential treatment. "Evolution might be wrong. Here are some alternate popular theories: There was this ice giant and he.... or there was a divine being who came down and sculpted men out of mud and then breathed on them. Or they are the manifestation of a divine being's dream. Or..."

Do that for about a day and wait for the outrage as parents demand that the school stop teaching their impressionable little children that the world was created from a yak.

Other western nations have more government involvement in schools and don't see any of this nonsense. This is, if anything, the result of too little government involvement, especially at a high level: education, instead of being handled by professionals at a high level, is administered by local curtain twitchers with an agenda and little else.

This is what happens when you let populism stomp all over everything, and it's going to get worse as opportunistic politicians try to wield populist ignorance for their own end.

It's a commonly-held belief among the religious that children would behave if only they got religion. And for what it's worth, if every one were truly practicing Christians, we wouldn't need much in the way of law enforcement. But when even the preachers in the pulpits can't keep their own vices in check, I think the notion that pushing religion on students will fix discipline problems is totally misguided.

As for creationism in the classroom, I want two things:

1) A solid scientific critique of evolution. I have absolutely no problem with them calling it into question, but they MUST do so scientifically. If evolution is so wrong, it shouldn't be hard to provide evidence.

2) Some sort of argument for creationism beyond "God did it" and the creation story of any given religious text.

In 1929, the Fascist regime gained the political support and blessing of the Roman Catholic Church after the regime signed a concordat with the Church, known as the Lateran Treaty, which gave the papacy state sovereignty and financial compensation for the seizure of Church lands by the liberal state in the nineteenth century.

In April 1941, multi-ethnic Yugoslavia fell to the Nazis who wasted no time in installing the fanatical Ante Pavlics Catholic Ustashe in power in Croatia. With the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church and the active participation of clergy, especially Franciscan monks, the Ustashe killed 750,000 Serbs, Jews, and Roma in an orgy of violence that shocked even some of the Germans and revolted their Italian allies.

I think they should be allowed to teach "Intelligent Design" after they explain where their hypothesized Intelligent Designer was intelligently designed --their entire point, after all, is the claim that the complexity of life and intelligence is beyond the abilities of evolution to accomplish. Therefore, since their proposed Intelligent Designer is by-definition intelligent and complex....

I think they should be allowed to teach "Intelligent Design" after they explain where their hypothesized Intelligent Designer was intelligently designed --their entire point, after all, is the claim that the complexity of life and intelligence is beyond the abilities of evolution to accomplish. Therefore, since their proposed Intelligent Designer is by-definition intelligent and complex....

I know this post is anonymous but it's pretty much spot on...
if I had some mod points I'd mod it in the morning, I'd mod it in the evening, all over this land. I'd mod it about danger, I'd mod it about a warning, but it being about Louisiana I doubt they need the modding about the love between the brothers and sisters...

I believe what I am saying is that anyone who claims to be a "biologist" but doesn't understand that evolution is an irrefutable fact isn't really studying biology. the more appropriate analogy would be someone claiming to be a physicist who doesn't believe in the laws of thermodynamics.

What I'm saying is that by making a special term for biologists who accept evolution the ID people are implying that there is a legitimate scientific debate over the issue which there is not.

The term creationists should use is "biologist". That is what I am saying. There are not two branches of biologists with equal ground and argument over the issue. There are creationists and there are biologists. One side's argument requires the rejection of the findings of modern biology the other is the study of it.

"Evolutionist" implies a special subset of biology that does not exist. They should call them "biologist" and drop the pretense that they have a valid scientific claim.

I have a legitimate problem with them creating a term to indicate a divide which does not meaningfully exist. The people who study evolution are called "biologists". I am fine with them using "evolutionary biologists" if they are discussing the specific subset of biology specifically devoted to the study of biology but to use "evolutionist" implies that modern biological science and evolution are not intrinsically intertwined which is fallacious. What you don't seem to be getting about my point is that I am saying that they SHOULD NOT be using a using a special term to define those who disagree with them.

It is disingenuous and akin to the XKCD comic where there's the cereal on the shelf that says "arsenic free". The point being that while it's technically true, the implication of stating it by it's very nature brings up unsaid assumptions about the topic which are inherently UNtrue. (that the other cereal contains arsenic or that the study of evolution has equal ground to the study of creationism)

It's also nonscience because it leads nowhere. It merely says at some point "there's no point looking for why here" and that ends science.

Science is the eternal curious ape asking "why's that, then?". As soon as you put in "irreducible complexity" you've closed off science.

Because this is actually an attempt to end science for all. Religion has been cut back further and further, from being the reason why lions eat people, lightning strikes and illness happens. Now we know that lions are independent creatures that eat meat, lightning strikes are caused by electrical buildup in the clouds and that illnesses are caused by little organisms.

'It merely says at some point "there's no point looking for why here" and that ends science.'

I'd say that depends a bit on the particular brand of creationism in question, but generally I agree.

However, be careful just how derisively you treat that attitude. The vast majority of "sceintifically-minded" people treat the big bang in exactly the same way. "Oh, that was the beginning; alright then."

However, be careful just how derisively you treat that attitude. The vast majority of "sceintifically-minded" people treat the big bang in exactly the same way. "Oh, that was the beginning; alright then."

Yep but the scientifically-minded are just philosophizing like the rest of us when they talk spirituality rather than science. Isaac Newton spent more of his time and effort on questions of religion rather than physics and math. It is the physics and math that he is remembered for. Also, there is a quite of lot of "Why's that, then?" on the Big Bang, the Hubble Expansion, and any number of other Big Questions in cosmology right now. The Big Bang itself is not exempt from becoming just another explained phenomenon.

This may sound weird coming from someone who believes in Creationism, but I agree. Creationism is not a science but a belief, and should not be taught in Science Class.

Teaching it in school, though, is a whole different issue, which is what I am for. My local district teaches religous courses as electives, and covers religions other than just Christianity. Its basically the best way that I know of to please everyone, Evolution is taught in science, Creationism is taught in religion, and offering the religion class says, "We understand that there are different viewpoints, and we are presenting them, in their proper light".

In summery, offer religion based classes to students, but don't mistake beliefs as science. Shoot, you can go as far as to require religion based classes IF you cover different religions, and call it diversity sensitivity training (some people on Slashdot could probably benefit from diversity training). Then let kids make up their own minds. Teachers should not pressure a kid at any time by saying the other one is wrong, or by presenting their personal views.

So keep creationism out of science, but do offer religious beliefs as a class outside of science.

Why should we have classes on religions? Discussing ethics and morality is obviously of paramount importance, while adding dogma to this discourse is not. Should there be entire classes on Scientology and ancient religions or just the ones you personally think contain validity? The graveyard of dead deities we call mythology are gods and religions that people once took as seriously as you do in your religion. It is 2010. The majority of intelligent people are just being polite and trying to not to hurt religious peoples' feelings at this point.

My tax dollars should not be spent on indoctrinating kids into any cults or other magical thinking societies. You folks already get tax breaks on your fantasy, what more do you really think you should get?

Actually, a lot of creationists' claims are falsifiable. They make arguments about geology, fossils, isotope dating etc. can that can be readily compared to reality. Trouble is they've all been thoroughly disproven, leading to a purely theological fallback position ("it's just made to look that way by God!") which is unfalsifiable.

Creationism should not be taught in a SCIENCE class because it is not science. There is no way to falsify any of its claims.

Not true! Intelligent Design creationism has made exactly one claim, as far as I know: certain biological structures are "irreducibly complex", and therefore cannot have evolved for some reason.

This is false. For every structure thrown up as "irreducibly complex" (ranging from the eye to the immune system to flagella), scientists have shown a reasonable pathway through which evolution could have constructed the "irreducibly complex" structure, and frequently examples of the intermediate steps can be found in nature.

Of course, all it takes is one truly novel and unprecedented structure to randomly show up in an organism to make scientists take another look at the basis of evolution - but such a thing has not been described, and honestly probably never will be. If ID creationists can't find one with all the money and funding they have, it probably doesn't exist.

Therefore, I totally agree that ID should be taught in schools as an example of how scientific theories can fail, alongside the luminiferous aether and the "plum pudding" model of the atom.

Hardline Creationism, on the other hand, has not made any actual claims besides "God created the world 6000 years ago", which isn't really a "claim" so much as "gibberish", just like the Flat Eathers (but at least the Flat Earthers mostly realize they're just trolling).

You never prove claims in science. You can only make an observation that confirms a hypothesis. That doesn't prove that the hypothesis is correct for at least two reasons. First, your measurements are precise only to a particular amount of precision, so you can never demonstrate that the hypothesis gives exactly correct results. Second, you can never make measurements in every conceivable set of circumstances. There may exist a set of circumstances under which the hypothesis is incorrect, such as how Netwon's laws are incorrect near the speed of light.

It's similar to the conundrum that you can never prove a program correct by testing. You can only demonstrate bugs by testing.

I'll assume you meant there's no way to prove any of its claims. The same is true for vertical evolution.

No, he meant falsify. If we started finding fossils that suddenly changed from one type of animal to another in a single generation, or fossils where the exact same collection of species are stagnant all the way back to the beginning of time, or even where identical complex features suddenly appeared in many species separated by a wide distance simultaneously... or if we weren't able to reproduce selective breeding or specification in the lab... or if no bacteria ever developed resistance to antibiotics... or if genetic tests on existing fossils hadn't shown genetic drift tempered by survivability in an environment...

These types of observations would start to falsify the theory of evolution. The theory would have to change to accommodate them.

There is no way to falsify creationism. Any observation anyone makes can simply be explained by "God made it that way." There is no way to refute it with evidence-- it is a belief-based system that depends on supreme being instead of natural processes.

Any observation anyone makes can simply be explained by "God made it that way." There is no way to refute it with evidence-- it is a belief-based system that depends on supreme being instead of natural processes.

Actually its pretty easy to refute. Just get advocates of different belief systems together and let them logically debate and come to a mutually acceptable solution, like scientists would about any other topic.

I'm sure the "creation science" views of a traditional Roman pagan, a modern Christian, a Native American, and some eastern cyclical religion would probably refute each other quite well.

No, the basis of science is to make claims that are testable. That does not mean provable. It means falsifiable.

When an experiment in science matches the hypothesis, it doesn't "prove" something, it indicates that the hypothesis appears to be correct within the limits of the experiment. If it does not match the hypothesis, then the theory behind the hypothesis is faulty and must be revised or discarded.

Science progresses when previous theories are shown to be incorrect or incomplete, and are revised or replaced.

And experiments are also required to be reproduceable by anyone who wishes to test the theory and can recreate the experiment.

Religion does not leave any room for falsification. You can't prove a religious belief false, that's how the belief system is structured. It may be possible for an actual divine act to occur and convince people that a belief is true, but it's unlikely to be replicatable at will by skeptics who did not witness the event, and some witnesses may choose to believe another explanation than divine intervention.

For something to be a science, you must have the ability to prove it false. Not believe it might be false, but actually have a way that you could know 100% it is false. That doesn't mean that you will ever find it will be false, it just means that there has to be the ABILITY for it to be false.

With creationism, you can never find that God didn't make everything (in however many days you wish to believe). That's because there's no means of proving that God didn't make everything. If you find dinosaur bon

Wrong. Please stop spreading misinformation. Falsifiable means you can't disprove the thing, not that you can't disprove the opposites. Science doesn't work by that trite little Holmes saying, "Eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbably, is the truth." It works by finding the simplest explanation for all observations, making predictions with that model, and confirming those predictions until you falsify your current rules and need new ones. If a hypothesis cannot be falsified, it is useless because it is the end. If it's impossible to find a contradiction, it's impossible to refine the model.

Which is done with a null hypothesis. In my AP Bio or Chem classes in high school, and in the Bio classes I took in college, the key was always to "reject the null hypothesis", which while not necessarily the same thing as "proving the hypothesis" is often times functionally equivalent. Since we can't set a null hypothesis of "if God doesn't exist then, we shouldn't see X" in any meaningful way, then we can't say "since we didn't see X then we reject that God doesn't exist". I'm really not sure what's di

We were taught about creationism in my school biology classes. The history and philosophy of science is an important part of the subject. Creationism was used as an example to highlight the requirements of a scientific theory (i.e. useful predictions, falsifiability), which it lacks. I don't have any problem with creationism being taught in this context in schools, but somehow I doubt that creationists would be too happy with it.

Don't be surprised. He suffered some serious head trauma disproving the liberal so-called "universal gravitation" before a quick-thinking doctor introduced him to the theory of intelligent falling just to get him to stop hurting himself....

I still can't get over that he said "We let them teach evolution to our children..." as though this is some sort of compromise with liberals or something...

I think they're having problems with the textbooks when they say "them." And it's not really a compromise as they pushed it into an either/or scenario. The logic of the comments in the article seemed to follow this sort of path: 1. We believe (note, not their constituents, them) in creationism so there should be a way for teachers to also teach that in the classroom 2. When children learn one thing from one adult an opposing thing from another adult, the child interprets this as confusion and sometimes exploit it to undermine authority and we already have a problem with that so 4. Only creationism or evolution should be taught to our students but 5. We probably shouldn't be deciding that at this meeting so (thank the flying spaghetti monster) we should form a committee to investigate it.

So it sounds like the resolution was to form a committee to decide if evolution or creationism should be taught in the classroom. Should be entertaining and maybe even tragic.

This guy is clearly trying to set up a Supreme Court case. Of course, he just handed whoever litigates this on Establishment Clause grounds the key piece of evidence:"Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom."

That means that the express purpose of the measure is to allow teachers to force a particular religious viewpoint on their students. Not a nice little side-effect, or the unexpressed intent. He actually came out and said "this is so we can force kids to learn creationism". So what he's banking on, it sounds like, is that either many of the justices who hear the case will be willing to scrap the Establishment Clause in order to get Christianity in schools, or (more likely) that fighting the losing fight will improve his future political prospects.

And the test is very easy to make too: Would Mr Mitchell be so interested in ensuring that every child in his district knew about Odin and his brothers slicing up a giant to create Midgard, and treated it as fact?

fighting the losing fight will improve his future political prospects."

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. 9 out of 10 times, this is what is behind politicians trying to pass illegal laws. These are not stupid people, they know that it will get struck down, but they get free publicity and get a huge boost to their political visibility via public funds. It is a great way around having to spend private money on political aspirations.

The trouble is that I can't rule out the first case either. I think it's reasonable to think that the guy really does want Christianity established in the US, so if he got to SCOTUS and Justice Kennedy decided to go along with Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito to allow it, he wouldn't be disappointed.

And yes, I'm reasonably certain that those 4 Supreme Court Justices would vote to allow creationism in public schools. Scalia and Thomas have voted that way consistently, and Roberts and Alito recently both voted that crosses on public land aren't a problem.

It's funny, but my first realization that there was a serious conflict between science and the Biblical literalism came in Sunday School. I was listening to my Sunday School teacher talk about Adam and Eve and suddenly it hit me. I asked her "What about the dinosaurs?" and she nervously answered something like "Well, if it's not in the Bible, it didn't happen." That was the day I realized that religion was a crock. Even a little kid can smell bullshit when it's piled *that* high.

Technically, evolution and creationism are separated by about 14 billion years. If your going to teach creationism, shouldn't that be in astronomy class? What does the fact that organisms have DNA which allows them to pass on traits to their offspring have to do with the creation of the universe?

There are the Young Earth And Nothing Changed Since (Yes God Buried Dinosaur Skeletons) creationists which you note. Then there are the wishy washy liberal Young Earth With Subsequent Minor Evolution (Just Not For People (Unless You Want To Argue Africans Are Less Evolved in Which Case I Ain't Going to Argue)) branch. After that, you've got the Old Earth But Time Began With Its Creationists, and I think

More to the point, it's not evidence of the invalidity of evolution. We can prove stuff with fossils, but we can't prove stuff with the lack of them. And if you believe the earth is only 6000 years old, you can't do either.

We have a hard time pointing out when the trickling sand in the bottom of an hour glass evolves from a pile into a heap, but that's not the sand's fault - we just don't have a good enough definition of "pile" and "heap", and honestly the sand doesn't care either way about that.

The same thing for speciation (which is what you're talking about, not evolution in general) - it doesn't actually exist, it's just some label we've applied to various animals. It's not evolution's fault that we can't define a "species" well enough to tell when a group of animals switches from one to the other - it's a poorly defined concept we made up.

Nothing evolves into something else. You're making fun of Pokemon but still thinking like it. Species it not an intrinsic value. There is no such thing as the "human race". All those things we call "humans" are are roughly 7 billion collections of DNA, that happen to be able to create offspring if you pair almost any of them up by gender. So, we create the word "species" to mean a group of individuals with similar enough DNA that they can interbreed. Humanity is, of course, not fully able to interbree

I went to a catholic school many years ago. They taught evolution with "enhancements". One was the de'Chardin theory that evolution was teleological, that is, goal-directed toward perfection. Is was their attempt to reconcile evolution and religion. This is not the precise very of evolution, which is non-teleogical, i.e. goal-less. Otherwise they pretty accepted most of regular tenants like long-time and natural selection.

I went to a high school in Germany that was funded and run by the catholic church. But for a school (and their diploma) to be officially recognised, the curriculum has to be accepted by a expert board in the ministry of education.

So there was no teaching or mentioning of Creationism and the likes in biology. And even in religion classes, this was not a topic at all. No teacher and no parent would even entertain that notion. I was born in Poland and my parents are deeply religious and they would not think about that. The push to creationism in the US leaves me astonished and in disbelieve. It is mental.

Aside: Although the catholic religion classes were mostly just that, you were not grated on your faith or being able to cite the bible at all. It was about interpretation, comparison of the books of the new testament etc. We even had a fairly objective study about other religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism), their history, their believes and customs. And even as it is a catholic school, we had about 40% evangelical christians, who had their own religion classes, and a few muslims, whose parents choose the school for its education quality and good standing.

> I went to a catholic school many years ago. They taught evolution with "enhancements". One was the de'Chardin theory that evolution was teleological, that is, goal-directed toward perfection. Is was their attempt to reconcile evolution and religion.

Yes, but that is the catholic church. They may represent a pretty extreme view, but they are trying very hard to be consistent. The news article however is about evangelical churches, which typically care a lot more about impact than about consistency.

As long as they also include every other creation story. There should be text from scientology, islam, hinduism, buddhism, and thousands of other creation myths from all over the world, in a separate book called "Creationism". Leave evolution in the science textbook with the theories on gravity, germ theory, and all of the other accepted, testable hypotheses.

Similarly I'm okay with religion classes, as long as the world's eight major religions are all given equal time. For some reason I think equal access to alternative theories isn't what they are really after...

As long as they also include every other creation story. There should be text from scientology, islam, hinduism, buddhism, and thousands of other creation myths from all over the world, in a separate book called "Creationism". Leave evolution in the science textbook with the theories on gravity, germ theory, and all of the other accepted, testable hypotheses.

Similarly I'm okay with religion classes, as long as the world's eight major religions are all given equal time. For some reason I think equal access to alternative theories isn't what they are really after...

This is always what I find so amusing.

They claim that evolution is flawed, and that it's "just a theory." They claim they want to "teach the controversy."

But they don't. They aren't actually concerned about giving equal time to all the viewpoints out there. If they were, they'd be teaching all the creation stories.

They don't want to teach any controversies, they just want to make sure their kids get properly indoctrinated.

This is a very bad idea - and that's coming from a self-described Christian. I don't want some goof-ball teacher going over something like this with my kid. They can barely get math right. You focus on math/science/history/reading, I'll handle teaching my kid religion and philosophy at home.

And as always, evolution and creation are not at odds. Evolution answers "How?" and creation answers"Why?"

I don't expect my views to be accepted by devout atheists, OR devout Catholics, so let's leave the creationism at home and not have a big fucking fight for no reason.

it is what human beings do when they engage in the genetic engineering of the dna of other creatures (or of homo sapiens)

the way creationists propose that god designed us is something that will be in the realm of the ability of human beings within a century. and if us lowly imperfect human beings have the powers of god, that says one of two things:

(Never mind, of course, that the courts will shoot this Louisianan idiocy down in a heartbeat.)

On the one hand, we have the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, a scientific theory backed by a volume of evidence more diverse and massive than that assembled in support of any other theory.

On the other hand...we have a faery tale.

No, really.

Cdesign proponentsists would have us instead accept a “theory” drawn solely on the proposition that the Bible is substantially true.

And the Bible opens with a story — the very one they’d replace science with — about a magic garden with talking animals and an angry giant.

Worse, it continues in exactly that same vein. It prominently features a talking shrubbery (on fire, no less!) that instructs the reluctant hero how to wield his magic wand. It has more talking animals, sea monsters, lots more giants, and an endless string of magic spells. There’s even a dragon in there, and I think there might be a unicorn, too. At the end we have an utterly bizarre zombie fantasy, complete with one of the thralls groping the zombie king’s intestines. And the grand finale? Global zombie apocalypse.

All y’all who dismiss science in favor of fantasy? This is why we laugh at you.

The premise of intelligent design is that God wasn't able to create a universe in which everything happened automatically. instead, it argues that He created the universe, and then had to constantly meddle because He couldn't get the animals He wanted by following the physical laws that He, Himself, made. This is utterly against my religion's conception of God, in which He does not make such mistakes.

My religion is, I think, a fairly popular one called 'Christianity', and I fail to see why whatever minority religious group is pushing 'intelligent design' should be able to teach Christian children that God is fallible and makes mistakes that He then has to correct.

Surely a better compromise between our two religions would be to simply not talk about what God did or didn't do at all in public schools.

I bet most of the people here that are all up in arms at the whole Intelligent Design in public schools thing, at least here in the US, are also many of the same people responsible that make this possible. These people are clamoring for ways to make democracy easier through increased ways to register to vote ('motor-voter',welfare office provided voter registration,etc) as well as increase the reach and scope of government sponsored school systems. Indeed, these people aren't upset that the schools are used to indoctrinate kids at all. What they're really upset about is that the kids in this case just aren't being indoctrinated with the correct social agenda.

If you want majority rule to broadly define governments and their policies and you want those same governments to oversee the delivery of education, you shouldn't be surprised that your tax dollars may be spent on someone's agenda for society; be that Intelligent Design, GLBT acceptance, or some other agenda.

For the record I do not accept Intelligent Design as scientifically valid and I wouldn't want my kids wasting their time with it; it's religious dogma. But more to the point I don't believe in an educational system which allows majority groups to control education such that they aren't schools, but centers of of mass indoctrination. I believe in private education systems that allow me to know what they teach the kids and make sure that my kids are being taught according to those principles I believe they need to think, survive and to become the intellectual superiors of their peers. I firmly believe that if you want your kids in a religious schools, Marxist schools, whatever, that's your prerogative; but that right ends with your own children and stops well short of mine.

As we seemingly can't stop the spread of idiocity, can we at least get transparency? Please mark clearly on the record sheet whether this student learned evolution or creationism, uh, sorry, they rebranded it to "intelligent design".

Please mark it, so I know, so I can hire only the people who learnt actual science.

If you teach both, please give seperate marks. So I know to hire specifically the people who scored A or B in evolution and F-- in creationism because they ridiculed it all year. That's the kind of people I want to have working for me. If you scored any acceptable score in creationism at all, then find a burger-flipping job somewhere. It means you at least pretended to take it seriously, or you did take it seriously, in which case you're either a liar or an idiot.

You know what? If someone wants to talk about Creationism in science class, I think that's just fine. All you need to do, is teach what science is first, and define what a theory is. You don't need to get into the whole "is this how life came about?" question with the kids, or ever explicitly say "this is bunk." Just talk about all the evidence that suggested each hypothesis and all the ideas for experiments (and which ones have been performed and which ones haven't) that people have come up with to confirm or falsify each one.

When you get to creationism, treat it just like evolution, and without getting distracted by irrelevant issues like "do we believe this is what happened?" just talk about the how evidence and how each hypothesis can be falsified. Never even mention belief; stay in the realm of evidence.

If you come at creationism from a science perspective, it will be so embarrassing that the religious nuts will be begging to ban the subject from science class.

Because, you see, creationism isn't the real problem here. I bet there are all sorts of non-science things being taught in science classes, because science is usually taught as a "what's happening?" class rather than a "how do we know what's happening?" class. It's the teaching of science itself in America that is weak, not all the various "sciency-sounding" topics within it.

It is very nice of them to have gone to the step of saying explicitly "creationism" not even "creation science" or "intelligent design." The history here is interesting. First the Supreme Court said no creationism in science classes, so then the creationists made up "creation science" which was claimed to be scientific. The whole "Earth created 6000 years ago, and a global flood 5000 years or so ago" made the courts not look kindly on that. See Epperson v. Arkansas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epperson_v._Arkansas [wikipedia.org] and then later Edwards v. Aguilard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_v._Aguillard [wikipedia.org]. By sheer coincidence, right after the Edwards decision, intelligence design showed up on the scene as a totally new, totally scientific idea. They claimed that this had nothing to do with creationism or creation science, even though the first textbook on the subject, Pandas and People, had a search and replace of "creation science" for "intelligent design" from an earlier draft. Some of these, didn't go so well, like the infamous "cdesign proponentsists" in one draft. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandas_And_People [wikipedia.org] Not too surprisingly, a federal court didn't buy into this claim and ruled that intelligent design was creation science which was creationism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District [wikipedia.org]. These Louisiana creationists seem to have the standard problem of being not quite bright enough to pull off the attempted deception and so just use all the terms as synonyms for creationism. That means that if this just gets to a low level court, they will get hammered quickly.

Unfortunately, given the current right-wing makeup of the Supreme Court, it isn't implausible that an appeal to the Supreme Court will get everything overturned and will end up with creationism in public schools again. The original Edwards case was a 7-2 decision (Scalia's dissent is deeply wrong but worth reading). The current court might very well rule differently. And Obama's appointments don't help matters much. Sotomayor doesn't have much of a good record on First Amendment issues with almost no record at all on Establishment issues, and we've got close to nothing on Kagan.

You know maybe that's the tact reality based people ought to be taking.

"Dear School board,
I don't want my tax money going to the ACLU and I know you definitely don't want tax money going to the ACLU, therefore, for the sake of fiscal conservatism and the love of all that's good and holy, don't push creationism. We all believe in the his noodley-ness here, but we'd rather take care of teaching our kids in Sunday school than getting slapped down for the hundredth time by those damned liberal activist judges. Let's make a deal. After Sarah Palin appoints Scalia Jr. as justice Breyer's replacement then we'll try again, but in the meantime, but we're just wasting our time and money while the Court is made up of godless commies."

I only hope you are still in school and as such have not taken the appropriate History or Government classes that cover the first amendment. Let me give you a head start, it reads:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Let me give you a hint here: the FIRST TEN WORDS might be of interest to you.

Don't call it a theory. "Irreducible complexity" is a demonstrably false hypothesis, not a theory. At any rate, his argument is basically "I can't see how this could evolve in steps, and as I am omniscient and omnipotent, that is proof of its impossibility, QED." At any rate, his implicit assumption that he's all knowing and all seeing is also easily refuted. He claims that there is a spider that shows irreducible complexity. However, it's easy to show steps how this spider could have evolved from a similar spider without ever being at a disadvantage, even though according to Behe, every single component is useless alone, and the spider is useless without all of them. Just utterly false. Irreducible complexity can also be shot down via Reducto Ad Absurdum. An arch is made of arch stones, and a keystone. Without the keystone, the entire arch collapses. Without the rest of the arch in place, the keystone cannot be placed. Therefore, one cannot build an arch, as it requires both parts to exist, and neither part can be placed without the other already in place.

He also likes the mousetrap example. (Even though the mousetrap is designed). He says the current spring loaded wire mousetrap is irreducibly complex because without any of its components, it doesn't function. This is trivial to show as wrong: Start with a basic cartoon mousetrap. A box with a piece of cheese in it, and a stick on the cheese holding the box up. Flaws? The mouse can shift the box and perhaps escape. Solution: Hinge one edge so it is harder to shift the box. Next Flaw: It takes a lot of eating for the stick to fall, closing the trap. Solution: connect the stick to a latch, and place the bait on a pressure plate that will release the latch at a very light touch. Next Flaw: You can't move the trap because its bolted to the floor. Solution: Create a baseboard and hinge the lid to the base, not the floor. Next Flaw: It's still somewhat possible for the mouse to lift the box and escape underneath. Solution: Spring load the hinge so it closes with more force, and remains closed. Next Flaw: The mouse, being a rodent, can chew its way through the wooden box. Solution: Make the box out of metal. Next Flaw: When releasing mice into your field, they tend to head right back into your house for all the free grain. Solution: Remove the edges of the metal box except the hinged edge. This will strike the mouse with the force of the spring. Next Flaw: The sheet of metal distributes the force evenly over the mouse. A fair number survive, maimed and possibly trapped. You need to put them down yourself, and sometimes they escape and die in the wall. Solution: Replace the metal sheet with a metal wire so the force is focused on one point of their neck. And there you have it. You went from a primitive trap to a modern trap. Each step improved the efficiency of the design. Saying "A mousetrap needs the plate, the latch, the spring, the base, and the wire, and without any it is not functional" is true, but beside the point.

With no exceptions, "irreducibly complex" bullshit that Behe has come up with can be shown to be reducible. And besides which, by asserting that all changes need to be beneficial, he's showing he knows nothing at all about evolution. Changes need only be not-highly-disadvantageous. They not only don't even need to be helpful, they can even be slightly harmful if it doesn't impact the creature TOO much.